Eleven (5 page)

And was this the boat?
Water sloshing up over the edge, pouring in, the feel of Night Cat's fur under his fingers, then water filling his mouth, his throat.

They stared down at the picture, the boy's dark hair,
his
hair, the zippered sweater. Sam Bell.

Caroline was reaching for the stack of papers that were held together with a rubber band when he heard the sound of a motor.

“The truck.” He scrambled up. There was no time to put things back together, but in that moment he saw a small bundle of cloth in the bottom of the box, cloth that seemed familiar.

But they raced down the stairs, and slammed up the attic door so it exploded back against the ceiling. In one motion, Sam smoothed the quilt as Caroline scrambled for their sneakers. They pushed into them and raced down to the workroom, breathless, just before Mack opened the outside door.

The picture of the boat was still in Sam's hand; he slid it, facedown, onto his table.

“Hungry, you guys?” Mack asked. “Want a snack? I could go over to Onji's and get something.”

“We're all right,” Sam said.

“Maybe I'll just go over myself for a quick cup of coffee,” Mack said.

Caroline's bus wouldn't come for another half hour. “We'll work on the castle.” Sam tried to get the words out evenly as Mack left.

“And I'll write what we saw upstairs in the back of the notebook.”

Sam stood looking at the door.

“We'll find it out, all of it, before I have to leave. And we'll finish the castle, too.” Her voice was uncertain.

He knew she wasn't sure, and neither was he.

It was dark and cold, and Sam waited for Mack to be in bed and asleep. It was close to midnight when he went out to the shed, the sound of the water lapping against the rocks in front of him. He dragged the ladder from its hook on the side wall, a poor-looking thing, missing a rung.

He leaned it against the side of the building, where it reached just a little higher than his bedroom window. He squinted up at it in the dark. Somehow he was going to get back into that attic tonight.

If he climbed up and stood on the very top of the ladder, could he reach the sill and pull himself up and inside?

He'd probably kill himself.

But the pipe was still attached to the top of the building. Maybe he could hold on to it from the ladder, not putting
much weight on it, just using it for balance for the second or two he'd need it.

He wanted to carry everything back down. He tiptoed back into the workroom and found a plastic bag to take with him.

He began to climb. Night Cat was outside, his front paws on the bottom rung, looking up. “Go away,” Sam whispered.

The cat meowed.

“Get down.” His voice was too loud. Lights went on in Anima's apartment, and then Onji's.

Sam leaned against the wall of the building, trying not to breathe, entirely still, as the cat came up another rung, still meowing.

Onji's window opened, his head out, looking around, and then Anima's window too.

“It's the cat,” Onji said.

“I'll go down,” Anima said.

No moon tonight, just a glimmer of light from the water. Sam backed down the ladder—

“I heard him,” Sam called up to them, hoping they'd think he was still in his bedroom. “I'll go down for him.”

Onji's voice was irritable. “The cat has everyone awake.”

“That cat,” Anima said, but there was laughter in her voice.

How many times had they said it?
“That cat.”
When Night Cat got himself up to the top of a tree and wouldn't
come down? When the cat wanted to go out in the middle of the night? When he wanted food?

But standing at the bottom of the ladder, Night Cat in his arms, Sam remembered something else,
“lfl get my hands on that cat!”
None of them had said it. It was just a wisp of a memory.

Sam stood there, petting the cat's back, and then the little spot under his chin. He leaned his head against Night Cat's. “I think we had a hard time,” he whispered, even as he wondered why he'd said it. He went around to open the workroom door. With the cat inside, he hurried back along the side of the house.

He started up the ladder, the rungs bouncing under his feet. Night Cat was meowing again, pawing at the window-pane. As Sam looked down at the cat, his foot slipped.

He grabbed the next rung with both hands and held on, hoping no one could hear the cat. He didn't look down; he didn't look at anything except the wall of the house a few inches in front him.

He climbed that way until he reached the rung just below the top. With one hand he felt for the pipe that ran up next to him. It was cold under his fingers, swaying as he held it lightly.

He raised one foot, and then the other, to rest on the very top of the ladder. He crouched, then slowly stood up straight until he was directly in front of the window. Everything seemed to be moving, the pipe, the ladder, and a
sudden wind that came from around the side of the house, but he pushed the window up with the palm of one hand and threw himself over the sill, hoping no one had heard.

Sam was tired now He scooped up the small packet of papers that was lying next to the box, reached for the bundle of cloth, and put everything into the plastic bag. He saw the clipping on the floor and put it into the empty box. He didn't need it; he knew all about it now.

He was finished in the attic.

If only he didn't have to go down again. He took a breath, then backed out of the window, one hand on the pipe, the other holding the bag, feeling the ladder underneath him as it grated against the wall of the house. One foot hit the top rung, and then the other. The rest was easier. He let himself down, and at the bottom, leaned against the house until his heart stopped beating so loudly in his ears.

He dragged the ladder into the shed and went back upstairs, wondering about that bundle of fabric so familiar to him. He waited for the cat to pad into the bedroom, then closed the door and leaned against it to catch his breath.

He turned on the lamp next to his bed and put the pile of papers in his dresser. What he wanted was to look at that water-stained bundle. It was wrapped around something, with string tied in knots. It took time to work them out, and he untied them slowly, carefully, until the cloth fell open.

He sat there looking at the pieces inside, touching them, then took a chance. Closing the bedroom door behind him,
he tiptoed down to the workroom for the tube of glue that was in the top drawer.

Upstairs again it was cold, and he threw the quilt around himself as he sat on the edge of the bed. He began to work on what he knew now was a sailboat, joining the pieces of wood, building the small cabin, gluing the tiny strands of rope that were guardrails.

When there were only two pieces of wood left, tall, thin, and rounded, he saw that the boat was meant to have a double mast. He dabbed glue into the small holes on the deck and fitted in the pieces, masts that were perfectly even, forming the number eleven.

Eleven.

Smoothing out the tiny sails as much as he could, he fixed them to the masts, and it was finished. He held it up, touching the sails gently, running his fingers over the wood, over the double mast.

It had been his boat.

He sat back. Mrs. Waring had pointed out the trees to him. What had she said? Something like
“You know by looking. They're trees, not anything else.”

His.

But it wasn't the way it looked, it was the feel of it. He would have known it if he'd been blind, known it with his fingers: his sailboat, not anything else. He thought about reading. If he'd been able to feel the letters with his fingers, cup his hands around the words, maybe it would have been different.

He'd sailed the boat when he was little. Kneeling at the edge of cool green water, he'd held a spool of string and watched the boat bob.

Was that true? Had it happened?

Yes. The string was gone, but the tiny nail for it was still there, rusty under his fingers.

He tried to think of what else he knew. He held the prow in his hands, willing himself to remember something about this boat with the double masts, to remember anything.

Where had he sailed it?

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think. Anima said,
“Your brain is a computer.”
And Caroline had said,
“Everything that happens to you is up there.”

Something must be wrong with his brain. He couldn't dredge up one more thing.

But then he realized: the toy boat was a model of the one in the picture. Had the photo been taken from a different angle, he would have seen the tall matching masts. He might have remembered looking up at those masts against the blue sky.

What had happened to that boat? Someday, he promised himself, he'd build one like it.

He put the small boat carefully on the closet floor and turned off the lamp. He went to bed, the quilt around him, Night Cat at his feet.

As he fell asleep, he thought again of the boy with his flapping hands. And the woman shouting, “Give it to him,
Sam. Give it.” The cat under the table, his back arched, hissing at her.
“lfl get my hands on that cat!”

His boat.

He'd wrapped his arms around it, but she'd reached for it, that huge woman with her shadow hovering over them on the wall. And he heard the sound of one of the masts snapping in two.

He lay there waiting for his heart to stop its fluttering, for the fear to lessen. Then he fumbled with the switch on the lamp and went to the closet, knowing what he'd see.

The mast on the right had been mended so carefully, you wouldn't know it had been broken unless you were looking for it.

He sank down onto the floor with the boat in his hands, mouth dry, so afraid. Suppose he belonged in that place with that woman? In that house with the kitchen white and cold?

Suppose he didn't belong here with Mack?

Before school, Sam divided up the pack of papers he'd taken from the attic: half in one jacket pocket, half in the other. He brought them to school to show Caroline, but he wanted to check them out first, even though he'd be lucky to read two or three words himself.

After lunch, he went down to Mrs. Waring's Resource Room. It was a miserable place, with a spider wandering across the board and papers strewn over a table in back. Piles of books zigzagged halfway up the side of the wall: easy books with bent covers.

Mrs. Waring had told him once she thought the room was miserable too, even though there were a dozen plants on the windowsills and she'd pinned up pictures of the ocean with crashing waves.

Her desk was all right, though. One of the kids had brought in a glass bowl filled with sand and shells, and Mrs. Waring had added a striped wooden fish with an open mouth. The fish reminded Sam of Joseph, who sat across from him every day, scarfing down whatever he had left over from lunch.

Mrs. Waring passed out little books to practice context clues. It had sentences like
Carry your u when it

rains.
Joseph had written in
underwear
, trying to be funny, and even Mrs. Waring had laughed.

“Add sensible words,” she said now.

Sam picked up his pen and bent his head over the booklet. At the same time, he slid one of the papers from the attic out of his pocket. He put it half inside the desk so he could look down at it. A bunch of numbers ran along the page in columns, with
a.m.
or
p.m.
on the sides. A schedule, then.

He took a quick look at Mrs. Waring to make sure she was still up front; she was watching him. He frowned as if he were trying to think of an answer. The question was idiot easy:
Tigers live in the j
. There was even a sketch of a tiger on one side. Not so easy to spell
jungle
, though.

At the top of the schedule were a couple of words:
SUMMER—something with an
F—
HOURS.
What?

Not
fair.
Not free. It had to make sense.

Mrs. Waring cleared her throat and he looked at his booklet. The next sentence needed a C, a country, China probably.

It reminded him of something that had happened in second grade. He looked over at the geraniums on the sill. They bloomed all winter, red and orange, with a sharp smell that came from their notched leaves and the damp soil. And only he and Mrs. Waring knew what was under the third pot.

That year, Mrs. Waring still came to his classroom door and waited until she caught his eye. Sometimes he wouldn't look at her, and one of the kids would yell, “Hey, that teacher is here.”

“Where are you going?” Eric always asked.

“Going to China,” he said once, angry.

“He can't spell
China,”
Marcy had whispered. “He can't spell
cat.”
Marcy, a pain even then.

“I want to spell
cat,”
he'd told Mrs. Waring, and she'd curved the thumb of his left hand to meet his index finger, then pressed them both open a little. “If I leave my finger in the circle it becomes a G. See?”

“I don't care about G. I want to know
cat.”

“Yes, without the finger it's C. Use this hand, the one”— she pulled his left sleeve above his wrist, searching—“the one with the freckle. C for
cat.”

Someone called her from the office then, and she had to leave the Resource Room. He sat there waiting. His class passed on the way to recess, and he felt that heavy lump begin in his chest. He heard the tick of the clock overhead and put his head down. She still didn't come.

He stood up and went over to her desk. A small pair of
scissors was in a cup, its ends rounded, but they dug into the wood of the windowsill easily as he began to draw the C.

It was another teacher who found him, who saw him make the last bit of the curve in the C. And so he had to wait again, this time in the principal's office, while they called Mack.

“Sorry,” he'd told Mack when he came in the door, looking worried. And “Sorry,” he'd said to Mrs. Akins, the principal. He couldn't imagine what had made him carve up the wood of the sill. But the anger was still there, hot in his chest.